1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a high-speed filing system for use as an archive system for preserving material tapes in broadcasting stations, for example, under such conditions that allow them to be played back when desired.
2. Description of the Related Art
Television broadcasting stations, production houses, etc. archive recorded broadcast programs on tapes which are the same as original material tapes in the same formats as those of the original material tapes with bibliographic details added.
There has been a demand for archiving digital data of recorded contents of a plurality of original material mediums having different formats.
Such original material mediums include 16-mm films, Quad (2-inch) tapes, .beta.-CAM (1-inch) tapes, u-matic tapes, etc. A great number of video image heritages that have been recorded in these various mediums are present worldwide.
The amount of such existing video image data is huge, and the amount of newly produced video image data is also increasing. Unless a new archiving technology is proposed for converting the existing and newly produced video image data efficiently into video image data in other mediums, it is impossible to initiate a project to archive the existing and newly produced video image data available in different mediums.
It is necessary to add, to archived video image data, ID data which will be used to identify the original medium in which the archived video image data was recorded, when the archived video image data is read for reuse. Furthermore, when filing data is generated with respect to video image data to be archived, the operator is required to check the filing data and then generate ID data. Therefore, the amount of work which the operator must perform is so large that the entire process is practically infeasible.
It is estimated that the time required for archiving the existing and newly produced video image data is 10 years if they are archived by the system available at the turn of the 20th century, and 2 years if they are archived by a high-data-rate data recorder at a data ratio of 1:1.
According to the conventional archive system, heretofore, it has been customary to preserve recorded video image data on tapes which are the same as original material tapes or mediums in the same formats as those of the original material tapes or mediums. On the other hand, video image data recorded in different formats cannot be archived because they exist in large quantities unless a new archiving technology is proposed for converting the video image data efficiently into video image data in other mediums.
Furthermore, when filing data is generated with respect to video image data to be archived by the conventional archive system, the operator is required to check the filing data and then generate ID data. Therefore, the amount of work which the operator must perform is very large.